This record came as a delightful
surprise to me. I had never before heard of
Trio Askeladd, and this appears to be the
group’s first recording. It is the kind of
utterly idiosyncratic music which eludes conventional
categories but which immediately convinces
one as being entirely true to the sensibilities
of the performers, as being music played with
absolute honesty and belief.

Trio Askeladd’s instrumental
make-up is in itself distinctive; the combination
of two brass instruments and piano is not
a common one. Of the three musicians, trumpeter
Odd Inge Gjelsnes and trombonist Geir Antinsen
chiefly work, so far as I have been able to
discover, in the symphonic world – Antinsen,
for example, is a member of the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra of Stockholm. Pianist Niklas Bjarnehäll
seems to spend more time working on the jazz
scene.

Their music, when they get
together as Trio Askeladd, is grounded in
the traditions of Norwegian hymns and psalms,
and Norwegian folk music. To this they add
an evident fascination with South African
music, especially as represented in the compositions
of the great South African pianist Dollar
Brand (also known as Abdullah Ibrahim), music
indebted both to the jazz tradition of Ellington
and Monk and to the township music of South
Africa. Norwegian hymn tunes, jazz, and South
African music sound like a pretty unlikely
three in a bed, but they are fused here to
quite glorious effect.

Unflamboyantly improvising
on their materials, treating their themes
respectfully in terms of harmony and significance
alike, Trio Askeladd create music which has
considerable gravity, but is quite without
undue solemnity; music full of attractive
melodies and capable of sudden bursts of infectious
joy. They bring out the stately beauty of
some of the traditional themes which they
use and give to them a sense of loving personal
involvement, so that there is no clash between
traditional themes and their improvisations,
which seem to grow entirely organically out
of the older musical materials.

Not that Trio Askeladd confines
itself to traditional (or jazz) materials.
The lovely ‘Icicles’ is a composition by Anne
Grete Preus, Norwegian guitarist, singer and
composer (and possessor of a distinctive husky
voice!), whose work, like that of so many
Norwegian musicians seems to straddle conventional
boundaries – the familiar categories of rock
and jazz, world music, classical music or
whatever, often seem to have little substance
in contemporary Norwegian music and this present
CD is a fine example of how musically fruitful
that attitude can be.

Askeladd is a character who
appears in Norwegian fairy tales; he is the
youngest of three brothers, whose quiet intelligence
triumphs where his cockier older brothers
fails. Trio Askeladd are unassuming in their
approach, but in their musical intelligence
and honesty they do great things. Very warmly
recommended.